Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud: Hiding in Plain Sight

By Tom Lonsdale

Behind the glossy ads and hype of the pet care industry lies an inconvenient truth: the industrial diets we feed our dogs and cats are causing a global epidemic of sickness and suffering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rivetco Pty. Ltd.
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645726510

Tom Lonsdale

For more than 50 years, Dr Tom Lonsdale has dedicated himself to the health and welfare of animals. A graduate of the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, he launched a thriving veterinary practice in Sydney, Australia in the early 1980s, which he ran until his retirement in 2022. Recognised and respected as one of the world's leading natural feeding experts, he has campaigned tirelessly to replace industrial pet food with raw meaty bones - a fearless stance against a multi-billion-dollar industry that has led to him being dubbed the 'whistleblower vet'. He is the author of three books: Raw Meaty Bones: Promote Health, Work Wonders: Feed Your Dog Raw Meaty Bones, and Multi-Billion-Dollar Pet Food Fraud: Hiding in Plain Sight. He lives in New South Wales. For more information, visit www.thepetfoodcon.com.

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Other books by the author

Raw Meaty Bones: Promote Health 2001

Work Wonders: Feed Your Dog Raw Meaty Bones 2005

Abbreviations

Introduction

Why the need for this book now? Why the provocative title?

The year was 2011. Not one person venturing up the path, entering the reception room and then the consulting room in my newly opened vet practice, had ever been given sound, healthy dietary advice for their pet. No matter whether they nursed a baby kitten, a puppy or a geriatric cat, or coaxed a dog on a lead, the situation was (and still is) the same. All new clients grew up in a world programmed to accept commercial pet food as normal. All had been following the advice of qualified vets, and all were unwittingly harming their pets—multi-level failings on a tragic scale.

Now 10 years later, after ministering to the needs of thousands of pets and their owners, I felt it was time to rise in defiance, to again blow the whistle on the multi-billion-dollar pet food fraud hiding in plain sight.

Back in 1991, vet Breck Muir and I first blew the whistle on the alliance between the junk pet food industries, vets and fake animal welfare groups. We explained in simple terms how junk pet foods, similar to or worse than human junk foods, were devastating the health of carnivorous pets. We objected to vets knowingly harming the pets under their care. We condemned the cruelty of subjecting pets to a lifetime of dental suffering. We deplored the overservicing by vets when a simple diet change would, in many cases, obviate the need for pet owners to consult the vet.

Breck complained: ‘Here we have the perfectly engineered commercial circle—a problem doesn’t exist, so we create one, and then come up with all the remedial treatments.’

Overservicing by the vet profession was bad in 1991. It’s way worse now. Vets in tandem with fake animal welfare organisations proclaim the alleged superiority of the junk pet food offerings. Bought and paid for by giant companies, vet professional bodies and welfare organisations provide a protective cordon—innocence by association—for the companies. The community of pet owners and the community more generally is accustomed to believe in the integrity of the vet profession and welfare groups when, in fact, the vets and welfare groups abuse the trust.

Imagine if all the auto mechanics in a town had a deal with oil companies. Imagine if they knowingly sold defective fuel and worked on the fuel-related engine problems without first draining the fuel tank. Imagine if every petrol (gasoline) station in the town sold adulterated fuel, that the government regulators knew about and condoned the scam. Unthinkable, do I hear you say? Unfortunately, not just in an imaginary town, but the whole world over, pets are ‘fuelled’ by junk food and the pet mechanics, the vets, dream up all manner of tests and treatments without either acknowledging or dealing with the fundamentals of the pandemic induced by junk pet food.

Government regulators know, or should know, about the problem. It’s the same for journalists, scientists, administrators and anyone with a role providing checks and balances against the pet food fraud. Basic biological and nutritional definitions tell us that carnivores with anatomy, physiology and behaviour fashioned by nature over aeons should not now be forced to dwell in solitary confinement forced to consume industrial grain-based junk.

When new materials, technology or methods are introduced, their manufacturers and promoters need to demonstrate suitability and safety as compared with the systems they are replacing. The onus of proof is on the manufacturers to show that, for instance, cars are superior to horses for carrying passengers and goods. Regulators review the company data, conduct further tests and provide certificates of compliance. However, with industrial pet foods, the system has been upended, with the result that artificial, harmful junk is nowadays considered to be the gold-star standard. Vets, pet welfare organisations and government regulators disparage the natural evolutionary standard—whole carcasses or the pragmatic option, raw meaty bones.

Evidence of the pet food hoax goes well beyond basic definitions. In 1992 I gave a presentation to Sydney general practitioner vets entitled ‘Pandemic of periodontal disease: a malodorous condition’. I urged the audience, including six academic vets, to take up the challenge and research the aetiology, prevention and treatment of the mouth rot pandemic. Laughter was their response. At that moment, I resolved that if they would not address the issues, then I would. Over the ensuing years I researched, wrote and campaigned against the junk pet food monster hiding in plain sight.

The resultant documents and books fill archives, nowadays mostly obscured from view by relentless junk pet food propaganda. Consequently, I’ve placed some key articles and representative historical data in Part II of this book, ‘Pet health matters’. The realisation that raw meaty bones exert miracle preventative and therapeutic benefits for pets has filled me with awe at the majesty of nature’s grand design. It’s a tiny realisation with immense implications for pets, people and the planet.

Part III, ‘Confronting reality’, describes how vet schools and associations are variously compromised and corrupted. There’s a chapter on the ‘alternative’ raw feeding movements that misappropriated aspects of the straightforward ‘raw meaty bones’ solution for their own advancement and suppressed the rest. The media and politicians have mostly failed a dependent public. The public deserves to know. Part IV recommends that we ‘press on regardless’ spreading the vital good health message by any and all available means—including legal actions against pet food companies, vets and animal welfare groups.

Disclaimer

Printed words on the page are our medium of communication. And words have a depressing habit of meaning different things to different people. Indeed: ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’. The supermarket aisle carries the signs ‘Dog food’ and ‘Cat food’. The cans bear labels describing the contents as ‘pet food’. With endless, regular use the concepts stick. The signs and labels seem to provide a reasonable description.

To my mind, it would be closer to the truth to hang signs ‘Dog poison’ and ‘Cat poison’ over the supermarket aisle. The contents of the can or packet should not bear the benign label ‘pet food’ but warn the purchaser that the contents are at best ‘artificial’ or ‘industrial’ or ‘fake’. However, I don’t wish to be obtuse, and I don’t have another term to replace the ubiquitous ‘pet food’. So, for the rest of the book, I use the term, but always use it in a ‘manner of speaking’. If the substance being described is in some way manufactured, then you can be sure it does not deserve the unqualified label ‘pet food’.

Artificial dog food aisle

I have similar reservations about the use of the word ‘carnivore’ meaning ‘meat eater’. People easily get lulled into the idea that a meat diet is sufficient for lions, wolves, domestic cats and dogs. But meat alone is not sufficient. ‘Carnivores’ need both meat and bone to stay healthy. ‘Carcassivores’ would be a more apt term.

However, putting pedantry aside, throughout the book I use the terms ‘pet food’ and ‘carnivore’ and hope that you will make the necessary mental adjustments.

Getting started

Much of the information in the book challenges established beliefs. No matter your starting point, I request that you suspend disbelief until you’re more familiar with the material. This is especially the case if you’re a vet or other pet professional invested in the current system. And for all people, I recommend watching the television segments and videos at the Tom Lonsdale YouTube channel.

Regarding vet reluctance to switch sides, Dr Mei Yam provides a vivid example. Most young vets took around six months working in my practice before gaining an understanding and becoming proficient in raw meaty bones theory. Mei Yam was an exception. She took 18 long months before her illusions fell away, before she rejected her vet school indoctrination and became a raw meaty bones champion. It took time for Mei to tease apart the extensive, interwoven strands that bind the junk pet food culture. It took time for her to see and connect the dots giving her a clear picture of the industrial scale, pet food cultural conditioning. But when she did, she bought the veterinary practice, enabling me to retire from clinical work and write this book. Mei, I salute you.

If you are a pet owner, you may like to start with three inspiring pet owner testimonials submitted to the 2018 Australian Parliament Inquiry into the pet food industry located at Appendixes A, B and C. Three pet owners describe the dramatic health improvements of their pet dogs and cats upon switching diets from processed junk to a diet of predominantly raw meaty bones. Also, before your next visit to the vet, I suggest that you read the ‘Preventative dentistry’ article at Appendix D. The article sets out precautionary principles and basic standards, standards most vets are unaware of and do not follow. Yes, until vets turn through 180 degrees and drop their slavish adherence to junk pet food dogma, pet owners must rely on their own research.

Regardless of your entry point into the book, I hope you enjoy the onward journey. There’s lots of ground to cover—best to start slowly.

BPPHC

Dr Mei Yam becomes the new owner of Bligh Park Pet Health Centre—27 October 2020.

Part I

Part 1

1

Some background, some context

London veterinary school

Fifty-five years ago, in September 1967 to be precise, I commenced my studies at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), University of London. Wide-eyed, perhaps not innocent, I was an English country kid heading out on a fabulous adventure in the big city. It was the Summer of Love. The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones topped the charts. A restlessness and sense of excitement filled the air. The price of inclusion, for me, entailed passing exams. So long as I passed the annual exams, I could spend another year soaking up the delights life had in store.

At the end of the first academic year, during the summer holidays, I took a cheap student flight to New York, then a standby flight to San Francisco and a Greyhound bus to San Jose. Through July and August, I worked 10-hour shifts, six nights a week in the Del Monte pickle works. At weekends I mingled with university students from Stanford and Berkeley and the hippie crowd in San Francisco. In September I travelled on a Greyhound bus pass throughout North America before catching the flight back to London for the new university year. The English country kid had grown up fast.

Foundation work in veterinary science involves studies in anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. Memorising vast amounts of information by rote was the accepted way of learning. Most lecturers presented information as incontrovertible fact that in some unspoken way was supposed to provide us with a foundation for later studies in animal husbandry, pathology, medicine and surgery. Frankly, I was amazed at the seeming ease with which our teachers poured forth reams of information. But how did all that information come into being in the first place? To me it seemed that diligent super brains, greatly exceeding my intellectual capacity, had assembled a formidable body of information in the service of humans and the animals under our care.

So, my life roughly divided into two halves. At the university I was intent on learning the nuts and bolts of how to be a vet. Proficiency involved knowing lots of facts, good hand–eye coordination skills, and an ability to find practical solutions to practical problems. Outside university there was no ready-made formula for the other half of my life. Economic necessity always constrained my choices. No lavish lunches, holidays or expensive clothes. However, I did travel widely. I simply hitchhiked wherever I wanted to go—Europe, Turkey, Morocco, the USA and Canada. Along the way political, philosophical and spiritual questions phased in and out of focus. What was the meaning of life? I had no idea, but the 1960s and 70s were a great time to be alive.

Quest for meaning

Looking to the future, I was not entirely content with the prospect of being a vet. Sure, I liked animals, and practical endeavour is always satisfying. But for me the question increasingly arose: How does the veterinary profession fit into and serve the wider community? I gained the feeling that veterinary science was conducted in a vacuum and that that it did not have a sound connection with the society it was supposed to serve. Consequently, that being a vet felt more like being an animal technician.

In the quest for answers, I made long-term plans. I enlisted as a volunteer with Voluntary Service Overseas so that soon after graduating as a vet I took off for Nairobi as lecturer at the Animal Health and Industry Training Institute. Then I hitchhiked through Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia before returning to London. I had a place lined up at the London School of Economics (LSE) where, I thought, I would gain critical insight into politics, philosophy and economics and thus understand how veterinary endeavours fitted into the needs of society.

You likely can spot this as the naive delusions of youth. The LSE was uninterested in answering questions about the place of veterinary science in the world, just as the RVC was not the least interested in going beyond the immediate bounds of mechanistic ‘science’ within a veterinary culture. Chastened by the experience, I dropped out and set off for Africa again, this time as traveller with a casual commission as a photographer for two children’s books on Egypt and Kenya.

First full-time vet job

Lesley my girlfriend and the gravitational pull of London drew me back to the UK. And by lucky chance I secured a job with Tony Todd as a vet working at a frantically busy small animal clinic close to the Angel, Islington. Fortunately, Tony my boss and work colleague Malcolm Corner gave me support during the first few weeks and soon I was reasonably proficient at the technical aspects of diagnosis and medical and surgical management of cases. We worked for a fee. Clients asked our opinion; we provided advice. We dealt with the superficial and obvious presenting signs.

Looking back almost 50 years I can honestly say the matter of diet seldom arose and, if it did, only in passing. If clients fed their animals out of a can or dry kibble out of a bag, that was OK by me. All animals—100 per cent—must be fed. But at the vet school little or no time was devoted to the subject. The common assumption was that so long as animals ate enough food—of almost any diet or combination—that was all that mattered.

Then as now, dental disease was running at pandemic proportions. It probably affected all pets to some degree, but was clinically obvious as stinky breath and sore and bleeding gums in around 85 per cent of the pet population. Seldom did we initiate discussion about the dental disease. When owners showed an interest or concern, we would respond by offering to scrape the accumulated calculus off the teeth and maybe remove obviously loose, diseased teeth. As dirty work, by which I mean not sterile surgery, this work was usually performed last in the day’s schedule and done in a hurry.

Second full-time vet job

My last proper vet job in the UK took me to Bedford and the practice of Alex Scott and Brian Cox. Farm animals, horses, dogs and cats were our regular patients. However, it was the exotic patients that held special fascination for me. From A for aardvark to Z for zebra and a host of species in between, we had responsibility for the animals at a wild animal quarantine station and the Woburn Safari Park. Luckily for me, I got to make regular visits to Woburn and struck up a wonderful friendship with head ranger Peter Litchfield and his team.

Cats and dogs never speak about their pain and discomfort. Indeed, for their ancestors in the wild, obscuring health issues was a vital survival mechanism. Prey, predators and competitors would all be sure to take advantage of an obviously weakened individual. Of course, wild animals in the zoo hide their problems. They also flee the vet and resent being handled. The challenge then is to look more carefully and think more deeply about the animals’ presenting signs, their biology, ethology, nutrition and environment. All our discussions about our zoo patients referred to their place in nature. Put simply, nature knows and knows best.

Australian adventure

My next stop was Manjimup, Western Australia, where I caught up with old school friend John Lumley. John had graduated from Glasgow vet school and migrated to Australia soon afterwards. Beside the welcome hospitality, I gained a gentle introduction to Australian vet life in John’s mixed veterinary practice. Then, in January 1981, I took a job as a locum pet vet flying into and out of mining towns in the arid Pilbara region—all good experience for starting my own practice.

The next phase in the adventure was about to begin. Lesley flew in from London. We bought an old caravan, hitched it to the Holden van and set off across the Nullarbor Plain in the direction of Adelaide, Melbourne and ultimately Sydney. Filled with immigrant vigour, curious and entranced by the delights, the size and scope of Australia—Godzone, the Lucky Country—we pushed forward.

Adam Smith, the famed Scottish economist, in his book the Wealth of Nations,[1] identified three necessary components of human economic endeavours—land, capital and labour. When time came to start a practice, I found an empty shop in Riverstone, an outer western suburb of Sydney. That was the ‘land’ component. Regarding capital I had meagre savings and needed extra funds in order to equip and stock the new vet practice. Bank number one rejected my application outright. Bank number two offered me a $500 loan. I declined the derisory offering but did open an account at that branch. With insufficient capital, the solution was to contribute more ‘labour’. And so it was, working from dawn until late at night seven days a week—initially painting and decorating and renovating old desks, sinks and office furniture—that I opened my new practice.

Half a world away from family and friends it was no problem to immerse myself in work. In those days an epidemic of heartworm disease afflicted the canine population. With the appearance of angel hair spaghetti, the adult worms clog the right side of the heart and pulmonary arteries. Apparently, so the story goes, Captain Scott stopped off in Sydney on his way to the Antarctic. His dogs, acquired in Siberia, were said to harbour heartworm and so infected the Sydney dogs. Due to the lack of veterinary care over many years the heartworm disease pandemic took hold. Fortunately, after a couple of misdiagnoses, I wised up and started testing dogs and treating the positive cases.

Heartworm testing and treatment became the mainstay of the practice. At the end of the first full year the two vet nurses, Merry and Marilyn, baked a heart-shaped cake sprouting jelly worms. We were proud of our successes and as you can tell, as yet oblivious to the more sinister, ubiquitous afflictions affecting our patients: junk diet, dental disease and obesity.

I cannot be sure when the blinkers started to fall off and when I finally twigged that all, yes all, of my small animal patients were suffering the consequences of a processed ‘food’ diet. I do, however, remember being conscience stricken when I realised how my contributory negligence had ensured the end-stage ill health and disease of Duchess the Maltese terrier.

Waking up in a blur

You know how it is waking up blinking in the first light of day. Slowly your eyes focus through the blur. Ears start to tune out a vivid dream and tune in to real sounds in the real world. That’s what if felt like as I came to terms with the reality facing Duchess, a long-time patient of the practice. I’d known her since she was a little ball of white fluff barely eight weeks old. I’d administered the obligatory vaccines and supplied intestinal worm pills, heartworm pills and flea treatments. Duchess was cute and charming and her elderly owners genial and trusting. A bond was struck, and a ritual established that carried us through the next decade.

On each anniversary of a patient’s first visit, we sent out a vaccination ‘booster’ reminder notice in the mail. And dutifully without fail the owners would appear at the practice with Duchess sporting a neat ribbon in her topknot. Following a cursory clinical examination, the ‘booster shot’—against mostly non-existent diseases—was administered and worm pills were supplied against the either non-existent or relatively insignificant intestinal worms. After the usual amiable banter, the owners would make their way to reception to pay the bill. Duchess had no say in the matter, but the humans were happy enough.

To the best of my recollection we never spoke about Duchess’s lineage direct from her wolf forebears. Neither did we speak about her junk food diet, whether out of the can or packet, or human leftovers. The tartar on her teeth, receding gums and stinky breath were standard, normal and not worth discussion. Errors of omission are some of the hardest errors to first identify and then secondly to remedy. We don’t know that which we don’t know.

We, Duchess’s owners and I, settled into a pattern where fundamental errors of omission were our standard modus operandi—the effect of which was catastrophic. Eventually after some years I took account of the murmur of the failing heart, noticed the accumulation of ascitic fluid in the abdomen and the sparse dull coat. The dental ill health started to elicit my attention and the owners told me Duchess was getting slower in her advancing years.

For many years I had followed the conventional veterinary path, thinking I was providing the best of veterinary care. A subtle arrogance and hubris supported my ego—and little Duchess was the innocent victim of my wretched incompetence. When I recovered from the jumble of misplaced, confusing thoughts I was, to say the least, conscience stricken. I realised that it was not so much that Duchess was getting older, but rather that her junk food diet led to signs of premature aging. As I recall from over 30 years ago, the owners were understanding and forgiving when I told them this.

Veterinary frame of reference

Vets, through the ages, have put about the notion that they are the best placed, best informed and most conscientious people who can be relied upon to do the right thing for pets, people and the planet. It is the myth that sustains the belief that the veterinary profession must be provided with ‘self-regulatory’ status. Vets, the argument goes, need to spend many years learning the essentials of their profession. Only they know when things are out of kilter and needing diagnosis and treatment. Only they can be relied upon to employ scientific thinking on behalf of the wider community.

Unfortunately, I must tell you, this ‘self-regulatory’ status confers immense privileges and little by way of responsibility on the self-serving ‘profession’. There is a widespread and erroneous belief that scientific thinking imbues the profession; that ‘evidence-based medicine’ is something tangible and that which all vets strive for. Unfortunately, passing fashion, more than high-minded cerebral function, is the determinant of what passes for acceptable veterinary practice.

The ‘influencers’ of veterinary fashion are the trade advertisers with their packaged, gift-wrapped concepts about veterinary drugs, diets and equipment designed to catch the attention and speak to the self-interest of the vets. The advertisements—in vet newsletters, drug catalogues and electronic media—pay lip-service to the needs of pets and their owners. But it’s the opportunity to make a buck that motivates the merchants and their target audience of general practitioner vets.

Here in Australia, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the dominant new fashion was the promotion and sale of expensive mobile dental workstations. These workstations on wheels, similar to your dentist’s chair-side compressed air-driven hand tools, were hailed as the new profit centre for vets. A rich seam of untapped wealth was accessible, the ads suggested, when justifying the many thousands of dollars needed to buy the machines. The ready population of dogs and cats with stinky breath and tartar-encrusted teeth could be treated on a six-monthly basis. ‘Dental prophy’ (a shortened form of ‘prophylaxis’) was the euphemism emanating from the USA and used to describe the scale and polish of a dog’s 42 teeth and a cat’s 32 teeth.

Visiting salesmen and speakers at vet dental seminars encouraged practitioner vets to send out six-monthly client reminders after pet ‘prophies’—earn a fee this month and again six months later. It was the guaranteed way to polish the smile on the practice accounts manager’s face. These days, over 30 years later, the same cynical marketing continues apace, only more so. There are doggy toothbrushes, dental chews, mouth washes, dental diets and a panoply of products and plans designed to exploit to the maximum the pandemic of dental disease affecting our furry friends. In the USA, UK and Australia the organised vet ‘profession’ promotes ‘dental health month’ where owners are encouraged to present their pets for a dental assessment.

It’s a systematic con designed to part owners from their hard-earned cash—relentlessly and regularly throughout the life of the pet.

Back in the 1980s and 90s some vets began to question the need for such active intervention disguised as prophylaxis or prevention. What did dogs and cats do prior to the advent of dental workstations? More to the point, what did and what do wild carnivores do to prevent dental disease?

After my experience working in zoos, and on safari in Kenya in the 1970s, it did not take much effort to figure out that wild animals have zero access to a dentist and nonetheless do just fine. In fact, their fangs are kept immaculate by scything through meat, tendon and bone of their prey—not once every six months but at every meal. [2] Observe the feeding frenzy, the ripping and tearing at the carcass, and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s that vigorous activity that serves to scrape and polish the teeth while massaging the gums.

Contrasting nature’s way with that of the dental workstation merchants, we needed to know how to harness the power of nature in the domestic setting. In nature every meal is tough and chewy. Was there a compromise whereby a raw bone could be provided once a week but otherwise the diet could consist of industrial ‘food’ in the can or packet?

Unfortunately, this was not a question that could be simply put and simply answered. Clients present their animals for treatment or for conventional vaccinations. They don’t want or expect the vet to launch off on some experimental journey—especially when that journey is replete with potential hazards. Raw bones are known to break teeth, get stuck in the digestive tract, carry a multitude of bacteria and give rise to dog fights or aggressive behaviour directed at children. There’s a belief raw bones carry parasites affecting pets and people. Raw bones attract flies and maggots, become stinky and messy, especially after your dog retrieves the bone from